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These few days I am receiving a lot of emails telling me that my app Keep My Notes is having issues.
I thought it is true.
I replied to these emails and didn't have any suspicions.
But, the latest emails are reporting with screenshot of another app (the same app)!
That app has 10Mil of downloads. My app only less than 10k.
How on earth these users are sending me support emails on the wrong app?
These also explain why there are previous emails in the past few months that they are installing the wrong app!
I know my app has a very common name with the other apps on Google Play but if a user clicks on the Developer's contact email on Play store website, it should redirect them to the right developer. Apps have unique package name that should match to ONLY ONE developer.
Is anyone experiencing the same?

The emails you are getting, they are from users, right? Not automated somehow?

Sandman said:

The emails you are getting, they are from users, right? Not automated somehow?

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Yes, from genuine users I guess. But not users of my app.

Understood.

My best guess:

They have an issue with the app they have installed, so they go to the Play page. But as your app have a similar name and icon, they mistakenly pick that one instead. Which means they also send their email to you, and not the makers of the actual app they have installed.

You should try to convert them to use your app instead. Something like:

"Hi there!

Thanks for your email, but I'm sorry - that's not our app. Don't worry, it's easy to pick the wrong one in the app store, you're not alone in doing so.

However, I'm glad to let you know that the issue you're talking about isn't in our app, and we have thousands of very happy users. They tend to like that it is really easy to do x, y and z.

Why not install it and see if it works better for you? Here's the link to the app again: xyz.

Have a great day!"

Obviously they have heard how helpful you are on this forum, and have reached out to you to help with their purchased app even though you never wrote it.

aeric said:

Yes, from genuine users I guess. But not users of my app.

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I thought someone ripped your app and forgot to update support email id in it

epiCode said:

I thought someone ripped your app and forgot to update support email id in it

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My app is not as popular as the mentioned app. So no point to harm my app. ?

Thinking of it, yes 1 or 2 people can mistook your app for another popular one, but the way you explained it, it seems you are receiving email from lots of users (too many for a mistake).

Could it also be, you added your email to some source code, and the developer copied everything into his app, hence receiving those emails?

mcqueccu said:

Thinking of it, yes 1 or 2 people can mistook your app for another popular one, but the way you explained it, it seems you are receiving email from lots of users (too many for a mistake).

Could it also be, you added your email to some source code, and the developer copied everything into his app, hence receiving those emails?

Click to expand...

I don't think so.
I think the app has some issues recently and I saw they just updated it. The issue faced by the users are all notes are gone. For 10millions users, I guess like you said, 10 out of them has made mistakes.

in almost all my apps i include a Contact/Feedback feature.
When the user need support or give feedback he presses the contact button and a email template is created with the app version, app name, ...
like this is know which app he needs support for and what version he is using and what os etc... it helps you a lot and also will tell you immediately that the user
is asking for help from one of your app!

ilan said:

in almost all my apps i include a Contact/Feedback feature.
When the user need support or give feedback he presses the contact button and a email template is created with the app version, app name, ...
like this is know which app he needs support for and what version he is using and what os etc... it helps you a lot and also will tell you immediately that the user
is asking for help from one of your app!

Click to expand...

Problem is not in my app.

The takeaway is always ask the user who report send a screenshot of the app to avoid misunderstanding that he/she is actually using another app.

I would ask them to uninstall and reinstall the app - if they're using your link, you may get 10 million new users

MikeH said:

I would ask them to uninstall and reinstall the app - if they're using your link, you may get 10 million new users

Click to expand...

If only I receive 10 million emails and I need to reply each one manually.

aeric said:

If only I receive 10 million emails and I need to reply each one manually.

Click to expand...

but YOUR app is perfect, isnt it?

MikeH said:

but YOUR app is perfect, isnt it?

Click to expand...

My app is super basic. It doesn't generate much income from the ads. So I don't even bother to update it. It is still using old ads library. If I update it, many things will break. However I tried to migrate it to a paid version. People don't buy it unfortunately.

The app purpose is to test my skill when I started using B4A and demonstrate I am able to put a production app on Google play store as a portfolio. Actually it is just for my personal use.

Even though it is quite a simple app from the surface but I have spent many hours enhance it. Underhood is a quite complicated API for syncing offline and server notes. The backend is PHP + MySQL.

Users will not lose their notes if synced with my server. Uninstall or changing phones is not an issue. Switching from Android to iOS is not an issue in Pro version. A Web app also available to view notes from desktop or web browser.

Notes are encrypted and password is hashed at both server and client. A lot of work and tests have been done to make migrating from free version to paid version without issue.

But it is fine. I don't really want to support it actively. Currently it only has 500+ active installations. And I don't care if it can reach more.

I suspect this is what happened

and Google never fix it.